“‘It’s just a spring,’ I said, exasperated with his behaviour.
“‘Just a spring,’ he repeated. He took some sort of small, black, leather folder from his pocket and opened it to reveal the heads of several test tubes. Selecting one that contained a clear liquid and an eyedrop pipette, he took a small quantity of water from the stream. He held the tube and the pipette up for me to see and then, without fanfare, let a drop of the stream water fall into the tube. The result was immediate and dramatic. The two liquids reacted violently, fizzing furiously and flashing with a strange cobalt-blue phosphorescence that lasted for a few moments after the initial hissing had calmed.
“‘Good Lord,’ I said. I may have said something stronger, I was so moved by the idea that I’d had that filthy liquid in my mouth however briefly. ‘What is in that tube?’
“‘This?’ He stoppered the tube and put it in his breast pocket. ‘It’s holy water. And that’ — he pointed at the stream — ‘is very unholy water.’ He craned to look into the tiny cave again. ‘There’s writing in there.’ He produced his notebook and began laboriously transcribing what he could see.
“I stood over him, uncertain what to think. ‘Unholy water,’ I ventured at last. ‘I’ve never heard of it.’
“‘It’s not the sort of thing Mother Church tends to advertise. And with good reason — you can combust a bishop with this stuff. Just as well for the serried ecclesiasticals of the world that it’s so uncommon. All of which makes such water bubbling out of the ground by the gallon all the more interesting, wouldn’t you say?’
“‘Who are you?’
“He didn’t look up, but I noticed that he stopped writing. ‘Does the name Johannes Cabal mean anything to you?’
“It didn’t even seem familiar, and I said as much.
“He started writing again. ‘Then that is who I am.’
“When no further elucidation was forthcoming, I said, ‘You behave as if I might know you.’
“‘I make enemies easily. I have a good memory, but it gets difficult to keep track of all the people who might have an interest in me. It’s a substantial list. To return to the matter at hand, however.’ He sat up and studied the writing that he had transcribed. I looked at it over his shoulder, but it simply looked like chicken scratchings to me, no alphabet that I’d ever seen. ‘The head of the spring isn’t natural. It’s worked stone and looks more like a drain to me. These markings are carved into the stone of the head. Look a lot like Ugol letters, wouldn’t you say? Rather pithy, too. Look at the figure that starts and finishes the inscription; that’s a triple imperative, the so-called black exclamation. Failure to obey carried the death penalty back in the time of the Hass. As to what it’s enforcing — ’ He paused, frowned and looked up at me. ‘Do not block.’
“‘They took their plumbing very seriously,’ I joked, but Cabal was not in the mood.
“‘Seven hundred years ago, you couldn’t move in these valleys for Ugol raiders with fur hats and ridiculous little horses. They swept westward, carving swathes through several empires en route, and nobody seemed able to stop them. The incursion started to slow down not long after they came through here before petering out entirely. Their leader, the Great Hass Majien, was an old man by that point. His ill health was probably what stopped the hordes in their tracks. He’s supposed to have died somewhere around here and they buried him and all his wealth beneath a hill. Unimaginable riches just sitting there, waiting to be found.’
“I couldn’t help but look at the hill upon whose slopes we were standing with widening eyes. ‘Good heavens, Cabal! You don’t suppose —?’
“‘Perhaps.’ He shrugged and seemed maddeningly unconcerned by the possibility. ‘One cannot help but wonder, however, why any treasure trove would require running unholy water, only to let the stuff pour down a hillside. The answer lies closer to the summit, I fancy, along with those thieves and their horses.’ So saying, he continued up along the trail. Biting back all too many questions, I had little choice but to follow.
* * *
Within a few minutes, however, Cabal resigned the lead as the bandits’ den hove into view. A cave mouth ahead of us showed signs of frequent congress; footprints and hoofprints led in and out and, as we listened, we heard a horse neigh from within. Cabal started to say something, but I tersely gestured him to silence as a pair of the brigands walked out, chattering with foolish disregard for their own security. I recognised them immediately as the two who had robbed me of whatever belongings had remained with me through my period of amnesia. My grim anger at seeing them again must have been apparent, as I looked sideways at Cabal to discover him smiling quite openly at me. Friends of yours? he mouthed with faux innocence. I glared at him and turned my attention back to the men. One was hanging close by the cave mouth, the one who had been so concerned that I might return from the dead to punish them. The other was already heading for the tree line down the slope. He said something dismissively and plunged into the gloom. After a moment, and with clear misgivings, the other followed him. As soon as they were out of sight, Cabal was up and running for the cave. I followed him closely.
“‘Careful!’ I warned him. ‘There may be more.’
“‘No,’ said Cabal, pausing to check that the woods seemed clear. ‘They were arguing about leaving the cave again when they’re supposed to be guarding it. Apparently, the rest of the merry men are off taking advantage of the refugees who were driven from Mirkarvia in the recent unpleasantness. Theirs is an ugly, mongrel tongue, but the meaning was quite apparent. Come on, Enright, we may not have long.’
“We ducked around the corner and ran inside.
“I wasn’t expecting the cave of Ali Baba and I wasn’t disappointed. The first thing that struck us was a near-palpable wall of stench, human as well as horse ordure. What little light there was in that foul place was provided by a few torches and many crudely formed clay lamps burning animal fat through coarse wicks. The atmosphere was oppressive with smoke, and I wondered aloud what sort of men would willingly choose this kind of life over one in the open air.
“‘The usual sort,’ said Cabal, taking a torch from the crack into which it was wedged. ‘Desperate men. Just like you and me.’
“Ignoring him and his nonsensical talk, I went straight to the horses and quickly chose the two most promising. The mare that had caused me all this trouble in the first place could stay there for all I cared. I turned to pass the reins of his mount to Cabal only to find him gone. A flickering light down a rocky side passage showed where he’d vanished. I called after him in an urgent hiss, but he failed to respond. Cursing him and his misjudged and ill-timed curiosity, I tied off the horses again and followed him at a trot. I found him at the end of the passage examining the cul-de-sac he’d ended up in.
“‘Are you mad, Cabal? If they come back, we’ll be trapped. The treasure of the Great Hass can wait for some future date, can’t it? If those fools are still resorting to horse theft, then it hardly seems likely they’ve found it, or will any moment soon. Come on! We don’t have time to dally!’
“I might as well have been talking about the weather.
“‘Convincing, isn’t it?’ he said, blithely unconcerned with our danger.
“‘What is?’ I asked impatiently.
“‘This,’ he said and moved the torch close to the rock face.
“‘What are you blathering about, man?’ I started to say. And then the words froze in my throat. The natural rock face, lined with the cracks of ten hundred thousand nights of cold and as many days of warmth, was no such thing. Under the oblique light cast by the flickering torch, the cracks resolved themselves into regular markings … letters … just like the ones I’d seen Cabal transcribe by that curious stream. In fact, some were exactly alike. ‘The black exclamation,’ I murmured, caught up in the mystery of the moment despite myself.
“‘Just so,’ said Cabal, distracted. ‘The black exclamation. But the warning is different this time. Still te
rse, though. Do not enter. Not very equivocal, is it?’ He experimented for a few seconds with the torch, altering how its light fell as he tried to tease the secrets out of the other hidden letters. ‘Know this, thou foolish … thief … no … interloper, know that to go beyond here is to suffer not only death in this life but … the one that is to follow.’
“‘A curse?’
“‘No, the Ugol liked their curses to go on for several stanzas. This is a warning. They believed in reincarnation, you see. Not only death in this life but the one that is to follow. It’s saying that you will be killed so very thoroughly that your reincarnation will die by it, too. That’s not the kind of thing they’d say lightly.’
“It is not for me to say I am a brave man, but I believe I can at least claim not to be a coward, physically or morally. Yet, as we stood in that close passageway and read those dire words of warning, inscribed seven hundred years before and likely never read until then, I felt a sense of nervous tension that I had never experienced before. The walls, lit by the fitful dancing flame, were covered in strange shadows that seemed to crowd about us; the air was thick enough to touch. There, gentlemen, within the living stone of that hill, I think I felt the slender, strong fingers of mortal, nameless fear close around my heart.”
Enright paused in his narrative to light another cigar. We waited in utter silence for the minute that the commonplace ritual lasted. When he spoke again, it was a shock.
“Thus when the bandits returned in force, it was actually something of a relief. A relief to be confronting a foe I understood on terms I was familiar with. A relief to face a known quantity. Admittedly, they would probably murder us in cold blood, but that, at least, was something I could apprehend and fight against.
“First we heard the clatter of hooves on the stone floor of the cave entrance and the laughter of men back from a successful day’s butchery. Leaving Cabal searching for the entrance implied in the warning for a moment, I walked quickly and quietly up to the opening of the passage into the main body of the cave and looked cautiously around the corner. There were a dozen of them if there was one — dangerous men, of evil aspect. The pair they’d left behind to guard the hideout were obviously the least of them, lowered still further by their evident dereliction of duty. Their leader looked around, and his snarling countenance showed his displeasure at their absence. A moment later, they ran in. The cockier of the two affected to slow to a saunter as he came to his leader’s notice. There were some barked derogatory remarks that left the less self-assured guard cowering and begging. The rest of the surly gang gathered around as the other guard stood up to his leader and spoke dismissively. The cave was safe, he seemed to be saying, why the complaints? Who was the leader to second-guess the man on the spot? The coxcomb actually swaggered back and forth as he spoke, taking the dark smiles of the other bandits as approbation. I did not. I knew their look, had seen it on the faces of righteous executioners and priests watching the innocent burn, seen it too many times to mistake it or the horrid sense of foreboding that always came with it. It wasn’t approval I saw in their eyes. It was anticipation.
“And then the leader, an ugly bear of a man, swept a curved dagger from its sheath, held it up just long enough for the guard to see it, to understand its import, and then he smashed it down into the hapless man’s chest.
“The blow was brutal, but it was not efficient. I think it took the guard almost a minute to die, sobbing and pleading for help as his blood ran free and hot over his fingers. A minute of laughter and derision as his ‘comrades’ watched his life flow across the floor to mix with the filth. Sickened, I quietly returned to Cabal.
“I found him behaving oddly, using his fingers like a cartographer’s dividers to measure out distances on the rock face. He listened as I told him about the number of bandits and pursed his lips. The fate of the guard he greeted with a nod and, ‘Good. One less to worry about.’
“‘No man deserves to die like that,’ I said, angered by his insouciance.
“‘Or kicking on the end of a length of state-owned rope. Or blown to pieces on a battlefield. Or quietly in bed surrounded by loved ones.’ He spat out these last words venomously. ‘One cannot pick and choose. You shouldn’t be railing against the manner of death, Enright.’
“‘And you find nothing to fear in death, I suppose?’
“‘Only one thing.’ He drew a line with his left fingertip along a crack and then continued down to where his right waited, having finished its curious measurings. He mouthed Perfect and pushed hard. There was a hollow grating sound of stone on stone, and the end of the passage swung in and back. Cabal looked at me, said, ‘Its inevitability,’ and plunged into the darkness beyond. I admit I stood gawping at the secret entrance, so perfectly concealed, for a long moment until Cabal’s irritated voice demanding the torch broke me from my daze.
“The passageway continued down perhaps only another ten feet or so before opening out abruptly. I stepped out into this new cave and held the torch high. I confess, I was harbouring some childish expectations of what the tomb of the Great Hass Majien would look like. I’d envisaged a cavern, its soaring vaulted ceiling supported by Cyclopean columns, heaped piles of treasure of unimaginable worth and, at the centre of it all, a great golden sarcophagus, perhaps standing by the famous war chariot of legend.
“Instead, I found that we were in a roughly hemispherical cave perhaps forty feet across with a pond in the middle. High on one wall, a V-shaped hole vented water that ran down the rock in a steady flow into a gutter. The gutter, in turn, fed a square pool that lay exactly in the middle of the floor, perhaps six feet along the edge the gutter ran over and ten in the other dimension. At the other end of the pool, another, deeper gutter took the overflow and ran it off into a sinkhole. Much time and effort had clearly been spent in the excavation, construction, and concealment of that place, yet its purpose was, to me at least, unfathomable.
“Cabal went to where the water flowed into the room, took some in his cupped hand, and tasted it. ‘If you still have a thirst, Enright, you can slake it here. The water’s good.’ He walked around the pool to the other gutter and, taking the tube of holy water from his pocket, allowed a drop to fall from it into the runoff. There was a brief flash of blue fire as the two liquids mingled. He nodded, clearly pleased that the experiment had performed as expected. ‘And this is the source of that remarkable stream. Now, I wonder what it is,’ he said, going to one knee by the pool, ‘that lies in here and has been supernaturally corrupting spring water by the tun for seven centuries.’ I didn’t like the calculating way he said it, and I was glad to find something to distract him.
“‘Cabal! Look!’ In the torchlight, I had made out more of the carvings, this time plainly written. He was with me in a moment.
“‘This one looks quite simple. No triple imperatives, no flowery discursions, just Thou who hast entered here, know thy folly. For the sake of thine soul and the sanctity of life upon life, leave now. This is the tomb of … ’ It was hard to tell beneath the unsteady light of the torch, the unshaven, chin, the dirt of the woods, and his own sallow complexion, yet I had the distinct impression that Cabal paled. ‘Umtak Ktharl,’ he said finally, in a ghastly thin voice.
“‘What did you say?’ I demanded.
“My voice seemed to shake him out of the state of mental paralysis he’d retreated into and he turned to me with a new, urgent vitality. ‘I said,’ he said, snatching the torch from my hand and heading for the entrance, ‘we’re leaving. Now!’
“Remonstrations were pointless as he gained the exit and moved out of sight. Cursing my impetuous companion, I went after him.
“I caught up with him at the corner of the passage and the main cave, where he was glaring at the bandits from concealment, apparently trying to will them into nonexistence. ‘Who’s Umtak Ktharl?’ I whispered urgently.
“‘That doesn’t matter,’ he whispered back. ‘We should be concerning ourselves with how to escape.’
> “‘No, it does matter. Why are you so scared?’
“He glared at me. ‘I am not scared,’ he barked, rather too loudly.
“The bandits all turned to look at us.
“Cabal looked at them, then looked back at me. ‘Now look what you made me do,’ he said, exasperatedly. Then he walked up to the nearest bandit as if we had every right to be there. ‘Guten Abend,’ he said. The bandit looked at him with sheer disbelief. ‘We’re so very sorry, but we’ve rather been forced into precipitate action. A thousand pardons.’ So saying, he pulled the bandit’s revolver from his belt and shot him through the head. He backed towards me, firing twice more, snatched up a rifle that was lying at hand, and threw it to me. ‘We’ll just be holing up down here. Feel free to try and winkle us out.’ He turned and ran back down the passage, with me close at his heels. I swear there was a count of three before the bandits fully appreciated what had happened. Our unexpected appearance and Cabal’s easy resort to great violence had quite discomforted them. Then the bullets started flying.
“‘Now what?’ I asked him as we sought cover in the tomb cave.
“‘I’m no military man, thankfully,’ replied Cabal as he laid himself flat behind a partially emergent boulder, ‘but, in their place, there are two obvious plans. The better of the two is simply to ascertain that there is no exit from here and then seal us in. In a couple of weeks, they can wander in with complete impunity.’
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